


Do No Harm

by 74days



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-25 11:46:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18260639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/74days/pseuds/74days
Summary: Coach Murray gives Eric a talk about overcoming his fear of checking, but Eric isn't worried about himself... it's his teammates that he's trying to protect.





	Do No Harm

Eric looked out over the ice and sighed. Once again he’d been benched for dropping like a rock, or as Holster dubbed it - a fainting goat - on the ice. He could almost feel the animosity radiating from Zimmerman as he skated past, fast on the ice but nowhere near as fast as Eric on a bad day. 

And this was a bad day. 

Coach Murray was sitting beside him, looking out on the ice and trying to make it look like he wasn’t giving Eric a pep talk. Bitty had seen his own father do the same thing with his struggling players - eyes forward, posture stiff. Talking low and honestly, making sure that the other guys on the field don’t hear what's being said so they don’t make fun of you for it later in the lockers. Lots of buzzwords - focus, skill, determination. Extra ice time, more practice. Therapy. 

“I don’t need to see a therapist.” Eric said, after coach Murray stopped to take a breath. “I know what the issue is, I just…” He sighed. “I know what I need to do.”

Murray nodded, tapped his clipboard on his knee and stood up. “Good talk, Bittle.”

It sounded a lot like “Good talk, Dicky.”

* * *

* * *

 

Eric Bittle was locked overnight in a storage closet at school and his parents uprooted and moved rather than deal with that whole thing. Sure, they called it something else - his daddy got a better job at another school, his mamma wanted a bigger kitchen and to live nearer her sister. But Eric knew - it was his fault. 

Coach didn’t seem to know what to say, and got more and more distant when Eric would shy away from the back slaps and rough-housing. His mamma seemed to get even more protective, shielding him from pretty much everything she could. 

They’d moved just before the summer, telling everyone that it was so Suzanne could get the house in order and so Coach could get used to the school and team before the school year started, so Eric got a week of locking himself in his new room before his daddy knocked on the door and let himself in. 

“We can’t afford to drive you to Katya, junior.” He stated, like Eric hadn’t put two and two together before they moved. “It was getting hard before, but with the move and the new house…” He sat on the bed and didn’t look at where Eric was sitting. His posture was rigid, looking straight ahead, voice pitched low and honest. Eric had seen it before. 

He see it again. 

“Your mammas worried about the kids here too.” He said, not looking at Eric, who shrugged. He was worried too. “There’s a gym here.” 

Eric nodded. Whoever said figure skating was easy never saw the workouts Katya made him do. Katya sent him a training regime to work on between his coaching sessions. He’d been to the gym a few times. 

“They do some other classes.” He paused. “Um, mostly for ladies. Uh, self defense, uh, stuff like that.”

Eric nodded. He saw them sometimes, arriving just as he was leaving. 

“I thought… it might be a good idea. New school might be new… you know. They have a hockey team here. It’s not really, um, I know it’s not what you want, but team sports are important and help build a lot of skills you can use later in life, and it’s non-contact so your mamma is all for it.” He paused. “I was always a big kid, junior. And I was probably just as much of an asshole as the kids who did this to you.” He paused again. Eric knew his daddy wasn’t a talker, and knew that this was hard for him. “I can’t go back and change how I treated folks. But I know what big dumb kids respond to, and I think, maybe, just between us, that going to a class where you can learn how to look after yourself… they won’t pick on you so much.” He pulled a leaflet out of his shirt pocket. It was folded real small, and looked like it had been made by someone on their home computer. In large, comic sans font, it said “Learn Self Defense” and had times and prices. 

“Let’s just keep this between us though, yeah? Your mamma might not like the idea of you  fighting.” 

Eric nodded as coach stood up. “Good talk, Dicky.” He said, as he walked out.

Eric hadn’t said a word.

* * *

 

It turned out though, that the conditioning that he’d been doing for most of his skating career translated  _ really  _ well into other types of physical work. He was already able to squat over his own body-weight and after he’d lifted his teacher a couple of times, it was suggested that maybe he needed something a little more advanced than the 7am self defense class at the local gym. 

* * *

 

When summer was over and he signed up for hockey, Eric found himself missing figure skating less and less. He was good at hockey, he liked his team. The other kids might pick on him because he was small, but the larger kids didn’t seem to bother him too much. 

And then there was the game between Baker County and Howard High…

Eric hadn’t been worried, although the Howard High players were bigger than pretty much everyone else on his team, they were slow as hell, and Eric was looking forward to skating circles around them, maybe even showing off a little - his parents were there, along with half of the school because although it was Georgia and football was always going to be where the school spirit was at, the teachers at least tried to drum up a little interest in other sports. And Couch made sure his players were there. 

Eric had been coming fast on the outside, watching as Sam carefully controlled the puck. He knew where he needed to be, and knew just how much power he’d need to get there in just enough time that it wouldn’t telegraph what they were going to do to the other team. He’d not been expecting the defense-man from Howard High to try to slam him into the boards because it was  _ supposed  _ to be non-contact and Eric had reacted without thinking. 

They said later that they’d managed to re-set his shoulder from where he’d hit the ice, and his jaw would be fine once they cut the wires that were keeping it in place. 

His coaches decided that it was best to keep Eric in non-contact sports, and those big dumb jocks in the stands never once bothered him in the corridors again. 

* * *

* * *

 

The next day, as Bitty apologetically helped a slightly dazed Jack Zimmerman back onto his feet, he overheard Holster talking to Ransom. 

“Bro, we can definitely make a play out of  **_that_ ** .”

**Author's Note:**

> This was a request from a lovely nonny on Tumblr who read a 'omgcp au where bitty hates checking, but not because he’s afraid of getting checked, but because his parents made him take self-defense classes and he keeps accidentally throwing people when they try to check him' and I loved that idea, so here is a little short fic about Eric being a secret bad ass!


End file.
